I have been having some problems with my computer, and from what I've read it might be helpful to re-install the SATA controller drivers. I am a newbie, and I really have no idea how to do that, and I could be completely wrong, so I thought I would ask for advice. Here is some more information about the problems:

I recently switched to Linux. I installed Linux Mint 14 xfce4 on my Asus EeePC (originally a windows XP version). I began installing extra programs and setting settings, and everything was going smoothly. Then something happened. I was copying files onto my Toshiba External hard drive to set up the hard drive for backing up files with LuckyBackup. I got a few large folders (10gb +) copied over, and then I began copying a 16.8gb folder. I switched to another workspace and tried to play some music while the files were being copied. The Totem video player came up with some kind of plugin dialog box for installing gstreamer plugins. I installed them and tried to play some music again, but it didn't work. At some point during all this the computer froze. I forced a restart (pressed the computer's power button). When the computer restarted I began to have all sorts of problems:

The xfce4- panel is gone on startup: I messed with settings some, and now on startup, a window comes up that says says something like "no running instance of xfce4 panel found" and gives me an option to start the panel, and the panel opens up.

The Totem movie player stops playing at about 2 seconds, but it will continue if I fastforward a second or two: I installed VLC player and it works fine.

The computer freezes after when trying to copy large files to external hard drives: I have not figured out how to work around this problem. I have tried my Seagate external hard drive, and my Toshiba external hard drive. Both do the same thing; they randomly stop copying data after a gig or two (they always get stuck while trying to copy a ".au" file from an Audacity data folder), and after I start clicking on anything the whole system freezes. The computer also froze once when I had my M-Audio interface running.

Any help would be appreciated, and if you think this is not the right forum for this topic, direction to another forum would also be appreciated.Thanks!

I've not much experience with xfce, but I remember seeing your other posts about this problem and thinking that I have no idea what you can do to fix them. It could be some corrupted system files and/or settings.

Your best bet would probably be to get any important files backed up off the computer, and then wipe the system partition and do a full reinstall of Mint 14 xfce4. From looking at the specs, the system should not be giving you these problems.

Unless someone else knows better, my advice would be to use the bootable ISO drive. Boot with it, then backup important files while running on it, then reinstall.

Thanks, I went ahead and did a system re-install. Everything seems to be working fine. I had almost everything backed up anyway, so I just copied the remaining files in small chunks (small enough to transfer without freezing) and then did a re-install. Re-installing and setting things up went a lot faster this time, now that I kind of know what I'm doing .